Part 10

Ah, we were born to never part! This little hand I hold to-night, And I, so with a strange delight, I press it to my beating heart, And in the midnight’s solemn hush I bless the little hand I hold. In broken whispers be it told, It is the old-time bobtail flush.

Then again in the following:

THE WARRIOR.

Under the window is a man Playing an organ all the day-- Grinding as only a cripple can, In a moody, vague, uncertain way.

His coat is blue and upon his face Is a look of high-born, restless pride-- There is somewhat about him of martial grace And an empty sleeve hangs at his side.

“Tell me, warrior, bold and true, In what carnage, night or day, Came the merciless shot to you, Bearing your good right arm away?”

Fire dies out in the patriot’s eye, Changed my warrior’s tone and mien-- Choked by emotion, he makes reply-- “Kansas--harvest--threshing machine.”

In October, 1881, Mr. Field commenced the publication of the Denver Tribune Primer, which he abandoned as soon as it began to be generally imitated. Samples of his primer style are appended:

MENTAL ARITHMETIC.

How many Birds are there in Seven soft-boiled Eggs?

If you have Five Cucumbers and eat Three, what will you have Left? Two? No, you are Wrong. You will have More than that. You will have Colic enough to Double you up in a Bow Knot for Six Hours. You may go to the Foot of the Class.

A Man had Six Sons and Four Daughters. If he had had Six Daughters and Four Sons, how many more Sons than Daughters would He have had?

If a Horse weighing 1600 pounds can Haul four tons of Pig Iron, how many Seasons will a Front Gate painted Blue carry a young Woman on One Side and a young Man on the Other?

THE WASP.

See the wasp. He has pretty yellow stripes around his Body, and a Darning Needle in his Tail. If You Will Pat the Wasp upon the Tail, we will Give You a Nice Picture Book.

THE EDITOR’S HOME.

Here is a Castle. It is the Home of an Editor. It has Stained Glass windows and Mahogany stairways. In front of the Castle is a Park. Is it not Sweet? The lady in the Park is the editor’s wife. She wears a Costly robe of Velvet trimmed with Gold Lace, and there are Pearls and Rubies in her Hair. The editor sits on the front Stoop smoking an Havana Cigar. His little Children are Playing with diamond Marbles on the Tesselated Floor. The editor can afford to Live in Style. He gets Seventy-Five Dollars a month Wages.

THE SWEET HOME.

Mamma is Larruping Papa with the Mop Handle. The children are Fighting over a Piece of Pie in the Kitchen. Over the Piano there is a Beautiful Motto in a gilt Frame. The Beautiful Motto says there is no Place like Home.

THE CATERPILLAR.

The Caterpillar is Crawling along the Fence. He has Pretty Fur all over his Back, and he Walks by Wrinkling up his Skin. He is Full of Nice yellow Custard. Perhaps you had better take him Into the house, where it is Warm, and Mash him on the Wall Paper with Sister Lulu’s Album. Then the Wall Paper will Look as if a Red Headed Girl had been leaning Against it.

THE DIAMOND PIN.

Here is a Diamond Pin. The Editor won it at a Church Fair. There were Ten Chances at Ten Cents a Chance. The Editor Mortgaged his Paper and Took one Chance. The Pin is Worth seven hundred Dollars. Editors like Diamonds. Sometimes they Wear them in their Shirts, but Generally in their Mind.

Eugene Field has written a number of stories, all of a sombre nature. He has at various times been solicited to contribute to Eastern publications, but has steadily declined to do so.

STANLEY HUNTLEY.

“Mr. and Mrs. Spoopendyke” are well-known characters. The exceedingly funny descriptions of the home life of Spoopendyke and his better-half, that first appeared in the columns of the Daily Eagle, of Brooklyn, New York, in 1881, have been reproduced in thousands of newspapers in this country, and in Europe. They are written in a style highly original, and occupy a field entirely their own.

Mr. Stanley Huntley, the author of these lively sketches, is a resident of Brooklyn, and has for years occupied a prominent position in the editorial rooms of the Daily Eagle. He is a born journalist, and has been engaged on many newspapers in both the East and West. For many years he was city editor of the St. Louis Evening Journal, and has also held positions on other St. Louis papers. It was not until 1881, early in the year, that Mr. Huntley’s humorous writings began to attract the attention of the public. They were so original, so brilliantly witty, and such oddities in themselves, that the Brooklyn Eagle became famous through their publication. Spoopendyke at once sprang into popular favor, and the name was known in every city and village in the country.

During this season of popularity, Mr. Huntley gathered together his best sketches, and brought them out in book form through the New York publishing house of W. B. Smith & Company. The book sold with a rapidity that was simply wonderful, and under the simple title of Spoopendyke, over 300,000 copies of the work were manufactured and disposed of within three months after its first appearance. Several revised and enlarged editions have since been published.

Mr. Huntley is of middle age, of lively temperament, pleasing manners, and is kind and sympathetic. He has been married for a number of years to a handsome and highly cultured lady, and lives with happy surroundings in a retired street in Brooklyn. Early in 1882, he was compelled, by serious illness, to cease his labors for a number of months.

It is extremely difficult to determine which is his best production. The Spoopendyke sketches are all good. Here is a fair specimen of them:

SPOOPENDYKE’S ILLNESS.

“How long have I been in this measly old barracks?” asked Mr. Spoopendyke, turning painfully in his bed, and gazing in a vague, half-dazed way toward a long line of antidotes on the mantel.

“About two weeks, dear,” said Mrs. Spoopendyke, coming toward him with a bowl of gruel, and smiling pleasantly. “The doctor says you are not likely to have another attack if you keep very quiet, and follow his instructions.”

“Oh, he does, does he?” said Mr. Spoopendyke, making a vain effort to sit up, and falling back with a groan. “He says I won’t have another attack? Now, what do you suppose the dod-gasted, bald-pated pill-roller knows about my case, anyway? Perhaps you think he could make an Egyptian mummy dance a Highland fling, and put life into a cigar sign. All he needs is three bulletins a day and unlimited chin to become one of the leading physicians of the country. I suppose if I take all that stuff up there I shall be born again, and see the next centennial. What does that bone-sawing, blistering old ape know about the future, anyway. How can he tell whether I will have another attack or not? Perhaps he will tell you the name of your next husband, and the color of his hair, for fifty cents. Perhaps he is a dod-gasted Spiritualist. What’s that?”

“Gruel,” said Mrs. Spoopendyke.

“Gruel, always gruel,” said Mr. Spoopendyke, turning his face to the wall. “Do you imagine I’m a Sheltering Arms and St. John’s Guild excursion thrown into one? Why don’t you tie a bib around my neck, get me a rubber to chew on, and put a rattle in my hand?”

“But the doctor says you must not eat solid food at pres”--

Oh, I’m not to eat solid food,” said Mr. Spoopendyke, kicking viciously at the foot-board. “A diet of cannon-balls and scrap-iron won’t agree with me. It won’t do for me to attempt digesting steel rails and bridge girders. He thinks they won’t agree with me, does he? The measly old rattle-brained powder-mixer. Here, give me that stuff,” and Mr. Spoopendyke knocked the bowl out of his wife’s hands, spilling the contents over the bed-clothes. “There, now I suppose you are satisfied,” he said, squirming over toward the wall, and digging his face in the pillow, while Mrs. Spoopendyke gathered up the pieces, and said it was so fortunate that the bowl was only earthenware.

The following excellent satire on the current juvenile literature of the day, was originally published in the columns of the Brooklyn Eagle:

INVESTIGATING LIGHT LITERATURE.

The other day a stout woman, armed with an umbrella and leading a small urchin, called at the office of a New York boys’ story paper.

“Is this the place where they fight Indians?” she inquired of the gentleman in charge. “Is this the locality where the brave boy charges up the canyon and speeds a bullet to the heart of the dusky red-skin?” and she jerked the urchin around by the ear and brought her umbrella down on the desk.

“We publish stories for boys,” replied the young man evasively.

“I want to know if these are the premises on which the daring lad springs upon the fiery mustang and, darting through the circle of thunderstruck savages, cuts the captive’s cords and bears him away before the wondering Indians have recovered from their astonishment! That’s the information I’m after. I want to know if that sort of thing is perpetrated here!” and she swung the umbrella around her head and launched a crack at the young man’s head.

“I don’t remember those specific acts,” protested the young man.

“I want to know if this is the precinct where the adventurous boy jumps on the back of a buffalo and with unerring aim, picks off one by one, the bloodthirsty pursuers, who bite the dust at every crack of his faithful rifle! I’m looking for the place where that sort of thing happens!” and this time she brought the unlucky young man a tremendous whack across the back.

“I think--?’ commenced the dodging victim.

“I’m in search of the shop in which the boy road agent holds the quivering stage driver powerless with his glittering eye, while he robs the male passengers with an adroitness born of long and tried experience, and kisses the hands of the lady passengers with a gallantry of bearing that bespeaks noble birth and a chivalrous nature!” screamed the woman, driving the young man into the corner. “I’m looking for the apartment in which that business is transacted!” and down came the umbrella with trip-hammer force on the young man’s head.

“Upon my soul, ma’am--!” gasped the wretched youth.

“I want to be introduced to the jars in which you keep the boy scouts of the Sierras! Show me the bins full of the boy detectives of the prairie! Point out to me the barrels full of boy pirates of the Spanish main!” and with each demand she dropped the umbrella on the young man’s skull, until he skipped over the desk and sought safety in a neighboring canyon.

“I’ll teach ’em!” she panted, grasping the urchin by the ear and leading him off. “I’ll teach ’em to make it good or dance. Want to go fight Indians any more? Want to stand proudly upon the pinnacle of the mountain and scatter the plain beneath with the bleeding bodies of uncounted slain? Want to say ‘hist’ in a tone that brooks no contradiction? Propose to spring upon the taffrail and with a ringing word of command send a broadside into the richly laden galley, and then mercifully spare the beautiful maiden in the cabin, that she may become your bride? Eh! Going to do it any more?”

With each question she hammered the yelping urchin until his bones were sore and he protested his permanent abandonment of all the glories enumerated.

“Then come along,” said she, taking him by the collar. “Let me catch you around with any more ramrods and carving knives, and you’ll think the leaping, curling, resistless prairie fire had swept with a ferocious roar of triumph across the trembling plains and lodged in your pantaloons to stay!”

SOME OTHER FUNNY FELLOWS.

There are hundreds of humorists in America who are comparatively unknown--humorists who are intensely funny, but who do not know it; persons who write one or two good things and then cease to write; journalists of the staid, old school, who once in a decade or so say something really witty. During the last ten years I have endeavored to accumulate a portion of the many stray bits of fun that have appeared in the American newspapers from time to time.

As an example I quote the following from an unknown humorist: “The editor of a mining camp newspaper went to Denver to hear Emma Abbott sing, and in a review of the opera said: ‘As a singer she can just wallop the hose off anything that ever wagged a jaw on the boards. From her clear, bird-like upper-notes, she would canter away down on the base racket and then cushion back to a sort of spiritual treble, which made every man in the audience imagine every hair on his head was the golden string of a celestial harp, over which angelic fingers were sweeping in the inspiring old tune, Sallie Put the Kettle on. Here she would rest awhile, trilling like an enchanted bird, and hop in among the upper notes again with a get-up-and-git vivacity that jingled the glass pendants on the chandeliers, and elicited a whoop of pleasure from every galoot in the mob. In the last act she made a neat play, and worked in that famous kiss of hers on Castle. He had her in his arms with her head lying on his shoulder, and her eyes shooting red-hot streaks of galvanized love right into his. All at once her lips began to twitch coaxingly and get into position, and when he tumbled to her racket, he drawed her up easy like, shut his eyes, and then her ripe, luscious lips glewed themselves to his and a thrill of pleasure nabbed hold of him, and shook him till the audience could almost hear his toenails grind against his boots. Then she shut her eyes and pushed harder and dash--O, Moley Hoses!--the smack that followed started the stitching in every masculine heart in the house.”

A Montana editor writes as follows of a hated rival:--“The blear-eyed picture of melancholy and imbecility who has ravaged his exchanges to fill up The Insect during the past year, and the cheerful looking corpse who has acted lately as his man Friday, and who is a tenderfoot, equally soft at both ends, will doubtless paralyze everybody to-day with his thunderbolts of choice sarcasm and polite invective. The intelligibility of their phillippics, however, will depend largely on whether they could borrow that dictionary or not, their vocabulary being painfully abridged if left to their own resources.”

The editor of the Solid Muldoon, a weekly journal published at Ouray, Colorado, thus vaunted his own paper: “It is the most powerful antidote for meanness and kindred diseases, ever offered to a suffering community. Elder Ripley, who hasn’t told the truth in thirty-two years, feels better, and he has only been on our list two months. Captain Stanley, who hasn’t tasted water for thirteen years, can now look at a brooklet without serious results. Ed Snydom, who has been troubled with his spine ever since the Ute outbreak, put out a large washing Monday. Jim Vance, who came to this country with an Arkansas record, now moves in the first society. O, it is a perfect balsam; two-fifty per annum. One annum contains fifty-two doses.”

An editor in Texas gives the following figures from a statistical memorandum of his life:

Been asked to drink 11,362 times Drank 11,362 times Requested to retract 416 times Didn’t retract 416 times Been invited to parties and receptions by parties fishing for puffs 3,333 times Took the hint 33 times Didn’t take the hint 3,300 times Threatened to be whipped 170 times Been whipped 0 times Whipped the other fellow 4 times Didn’t come to time 166 times Been promised whiskey, gin etc., if we would go after them 5,610 times Been after them 5,610 times Been asked what’s the news 300,000 times Told 23 times Didn’t know 200,000 times Lied about it 99,977 times Been to church 2 times Changed politics 32 times Expect to change still 50 times Gave to charity $5.00 Gave for terrier dog $25.00 Cash on hand $1.00

The following cheerful valedictory of an editor was printed in the Asheville, North Carolina, Journal: “In this issue of the paper I offer my house and lot for sale. My object is to quit the country--possibly for the country’s good. For the past nine years I have endeavored to make a livelihood here at the newspaper business, and at this writing I am a good breathing representation of the Genius of Famine, or an allegory of Ireland during the potato rot. The day star of my prosperity has gone down behind a dark cloud of unpaid and uncancelled obligations. As a dernier resort, I propose to cast my lot among the Mongolians of the Pacific coast, and with this view my leisure moments are devoted to deciphering the hieroglyphics on a Chinese tea-chest, while I patiently await the advent of a purchaser.”

The following criticism of the acting of Mary Anderson was written by a Milwaukee, Wisconsin, journalist: “Mary is about six feet in height when in repose, but when her frame is charged with emotion, and she gets mad, or excited, she seems to rise right up out of the stage and telescope until she is eighteen or nineteen feet high, and others look like dwarfs. At times she puts on a sweet, lovely look, and you would have to be held by two persons to keep you from mounting the stage, and telling her that you loved her like a steam engine; and then she would put on a dying look, and a wild, scared, desperate expression, so you want to rush out after a doctor. She has lungs like a blacksmith’s bellows; when she contracts them, she looks so thin that her back bone can be traced with the naked eye; but when she inflates them, her dress fits her like paper on the wall.”

Thomas Snell Weaver, the funny man of the New Haven, Connecticut, Register, is one of the coming humorists of the day. He is widely quoted. The following is from his writings:

“There was an extra air of refinement about the front parlor. The storks on a shingle and the Egyptian figures on panels had all been removed to the back parlor to make room for the super-æstheticism of the aureolan glory of the sunflower and the drooping grace of the lily embroidered on bannerets and hung in fitting corners of the grand old room. In this room they sat, and quietly enjoyed each other’s presence, bound together by ties yet undiscovered.

“‘Angela’ said he, ‘I think it is four years this very night since we gazed into the firelight together.’

“‘So long, Mr. Thistlewaite?’ said she tremulously, and in expectant mood.

“‘Now, I should think that after so long a time--it occurs to me to say--or rather to ask--why wouldn’t it be well--to call me “George” hereafter?’

“‘Oh, is that all?’ she said. The harpstrings of her expectancy had just been struck with a chord, but alas! the matrimonial overture was not then to be played. The whole orchestra was out of tune for her for the next six weeks.

Mr. H. T. White, a member of the editorial staff of the Chicago Tribune, is also designed to make his mark in the world as a humorist. His style is peculiar, as the following selection will no doubt show:

“‘Do not go, darling’--and as she spoke the words--spoke them in low, tender tones, that thrilled him from mail-truck to keelsom--Gwendolen Mahaffey laid her soft, white cheek on Plutarch Riordan’s shoulder, and gave him a look with her lustrous, dove-like eyes that would make your head swim.

“‘I cannot stay,’ he replied, kissing the peachy red lips as he spoke, and feeling wistfully in his overcoat pocket for a plug of tobacco, ‘I must go now right away.’

“But the girl placed her arms around his neck--arms whose soft, rounded curves and pink-tinted skin would have made an anchorite throw up his job, and pleaded with him to stay a little longer.

“‘I cannot,’ he again said, looking at her tenderly.

“‘Cannot?’ repeated the girl, a shade of anger tinging the tone in which the words were uttered. ‘And pray, sir, what is it that so imperatively calls you hence?’

“‘Bending over her with a careless grace that artfully concealed the slight bagginess at the knees of his pants, Plutarch said, in low, bitter tones that were terrible in their intensity:

“‘I have broken my suspenders!’”

H. C. Dodge, as a writer of humorous and witty verse, has few equals in America. His style is somewhat like that of the late lamented Tom Hood. One of Mr. Dodge’s productions is entitled

CONTRARY MAN.

Some men do write when they do wrong And some do live who dye; And some are short when they are long And stand when they do lie.

A man is surly when he’s late, And round when he is square; He may die early and dilate, And may be foul when fair.

He may be fast when he is slow, And loose when he is tight, And high when he is very low, And heavy when he’s light.

He may be wet when he is dry, He may be great when small; May purchase when he won’t go by; Have naught when he has awl.

He may be sick when he is swell, And hot when he is cold; He’s skilled so he on earth may dwell, And when he’s young he’s old.

Transcriber's Notes:

Italics are shown thus: _sloping_.

Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.

Perceived typographical errors have been changed.